As co-founder and CEO of Boxbe, Thede works feverishly to make Boxbe's vision a reality. He is Boxbe's evangelist, and leads the company's technology efforts as chief architect.

Thede is a consumer-internet veteran. He started using the Internet in 1990 and throughout the 90s helped build the services of several companies, starting with Match.com as its 3rd technical employee. In 1996, Thede co-founded Leverage Information Systems, an open-source application server company. Leverage built the technology behind Purple Moon (aquired by Mattel), Electric Minds (an online community), and Kiracom. Leverage was acquired by Diamond Technlogy Partners in 1999.

Prior to starting Boxbe, Thede studied information economics and artificial intelligence (AI) as a STIET fellow at the University of Michigan. He holds a Masters in Computer Science from Michigan and BS in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Rochester. Thede is chairman of Boxbe's Board of Directors.
Email: thede@boxbe.com

Mark is a veteran of media and technology ventures including both start-ups and established corporations. Mark served in senior executive positions including President at IntelliOne Technologies, Chief Marketing Officer at Walker Digital and Executive Vice President at both Priceline and Newscorp. At Sony, he served as Senior Vice President of the successful launch of Sony Online Ventures, which included multi-player games such as Everquest and the gameshows Jeopardy and Wheel of Fortune! At Microsoft, he initiated the MSNBC partnership as Director of Broadband Media.

A pioneer in broadcasting and interactive media, Mark wrote the launch show for CNN Headline News in 1982 and was the youngest Supervising Producer at CNN. He was also the youngest director at Prodigy in 1988, where he served as Editorial Director and General Manager putting more than 300 providers online for the first time, including Dow Jones, Consumers Union, Zagat Survey, National Geographic and WGBH. A board member, investor and advisor for several start-ups, Mark also co-owns COREBODY Decatur, a successful fitness club in Atlanta. In 2006, he completed a two year term as Chairperson for the Players on the Sony Ericsson WTA Tour Board and Women's Tennis Benefits Association, where he helped drive on court innovations for television, and spearheaded successful initiatives to achieve Equal Prize Money at Roland Garros and Wimbledon and the first revenue sharing agreement for professional tennis players in history.

Mark brings his experience and connections to Boxbe where he's leading our Marketing and PR efforts and making sure our consumer products exceed our members' needs. Email: mark@boxbe.com

Leyla has devoted her career to having fun while working on email and web security. After college, she joined Brightmail where she developed anti spam technologies. Following Brightmail's acquisition by Symantec, she worked on cutting edge email security user interfaces for enterprise customers. Leyla loves the diversity of the Bay Area and enjoys participating in community activities. Email: leyla@boxbe.com

Kai has been an entrepreneur for almost his entire career, which is fueled by a passion for taking an idea and making it a reality. His first experience at a startup company came in 1989, when he was recruited to work for Steve Jobs' Next Computer while an undergraduate student at Stanford. A few years later he co-founded his first software company, Swell Software. Since then he has played a leading role in building products for several other early-stage ventures, just like he's doing for Boxbe. Email: kai.quinto@boxbe.com

Randy has spent the majority of his career looking at interactive design, information architecture, usability and social media. In fact, the love of social media gets him out of bed every morning. After living for 10 years in San Francisco working as a Product Manager for Yahoo! and Epinions, Randy packed his family up and moved to Seattle, Washington in search of damper climes. He's been spending more time back in the Bay area again as Boxbe's product manager and primary blogger. Email: randy@boxbe.com

Esther Dyson is the Internet's court jester, a person of no institutional importance who somehow manages to speak the truth and to be heard when and where it matters. She does business as EDventure, the reclaimed name of the company she owned for 20-odd years before selling it to CNET Networks in 2004.

Her primary activity is investing in start-ups and guiding many of them as a board member. For more than 20 years Dyson wrote the newsletter Release 1.0 and ran PC Forum, the IT market's leading executive conference. She sold them to CNET Networks in 2004, and left CNET at the end of 2006. The Forum was discontinued under CNET Networks' ownership, while O'Reilly Media now produces Release 1.0 under the new name of Release 2.0, with Dyson's blessing. Dyson also was the founding chairman of ICANN (policy-setter for the DNS) from 1998-2000, and she was chairman of the Electronic Frontier Foundation in the 90s.

In 1997, Dyson wrote the book, "Release 2.0: A design for living in the digital age" (Broadway Books), which appeared in 20 languages and came out in paperback a year later as "Release 2.1." In that book, she envisioned an e-mail service that would let users control their own inbound mail. However, she may have underestimated the complexity when she wrote: "Then - and this is primarily a technical issue - simply enable any user to charge the sender before accepting an e-mail. The recipient, not the government [or a centralized spam registry], can then decide what ...require before accepting an e-mail." Email: edyson@boxbe.com